Grizzlies center Marc Gasol doesn’t really want to say the word, because it has so many ugly connotations. But with the rut that Memphis has fallen into lately, maybe, it’s not such a bad thing to acknowledge.

“I don’t mind us making a good pass for somebody else,” Gasol said. “It is always good, that gets contagious. Our problem is when we don’t pass the ball enough and we become a little, we have tendencies, to become a little bit selfish. That also gets contagious, in a bad way.”

Selfishness can have a few meanings in the NBA.

In its most negative form, selfishness on the basketball court is obvious—a guy breaks the offense, decides to hoist his own shots early in the clock, goes bulling to the rim without much of a plan, pretends he does not see wide-open teammates writing postcards and waving to him.

But there is also the phenomenon of simply trying to do too much, especially when things are not going so well for a team. Rather than letting the offense flow into a high-percentage shot, players trust each other a little less and start thinking that maybe they can lift the team out of the slump themselves.

That’s when movement stops, when coaches and players say the ball is “sticking.” Offense becomes slower and more difficult, you lose games, and players try even harder to single-handedly lift the team out of the slump. As Gasol said, that sort of selfishness is contagious.

And there’s no doubt the Grizzlies are trying to get over a bout with that affliction.

Back when Memphis was 12-2, when the Grizzlies were looking like a legitimate contender in the Western Conference, the team’s offense was truly humming, a dangerous combination with an already daunting defense.

The Grizzlies went on an eight-game winning streak from Nov. 2-17, and in that stretch, they topped the 100-point mark six times. They hit triple digits just 20 times all of last season.

The Grizzlies are not an up-tempo team by any stretch, as coach Lionel Hollins is quick to point out. They rank 23rd in the league in pace, and with big men like Gasol and Zach Randolph, that’s a necessary approach for Hollins.

But they started the year with great ball movement in the halfcourt, and that opened up an efficient offense early on. The Grizzlies shot 45.0 percent in November, in fact. But that has crumbled lately, and before beating Boston to open January, Memphis had shot just 42.4 percent in December.

“Last game you know we lost to Indiana and coach had put a big emphasis on selfishness. Guys not like literally being selfish, just they making selfish plays. And guys came into practice yesterday, we ran a lot of offense, we executed, you know some guys wouldn’t even take the shot. You know in a normal shoot around, they kept passing, kept passing, but didn’t shoot. Came to shootaround in the morning the same way, and came to the game with the same thing. So we made a big point of emphasis on moving the ball.”

The Grizzlies did especially well with that in the first half against Boston, in which they shot 61.1 percent from the field and had 50 points. It wasn’t so much the case in the second half, but some credit belongs with Boston’s defense for that.

In the end, the Grizzlies produced 93 points and a much-needed win, with the sense that the offense will get better going forward—maybe the contagiousness of moving the ball will replace that selfishness that had seeped in.

That’s what it is going to take for the Grizzlies to reclaim status as a contender in the West.

“We are not at that level yet,” Gasol said. “We’re still working. We got into a little bit of a funk offensively. But we feel we are working our way through it. It is not easy, it is not something that happens overnight. I think we are doing a good job of just coming together—it doesn’t matter who scores, it doesn’t matter, anything that happens, we have got to do it together. If it is good or bad, we have to have the mindset, there is the next possession and we need to take care of that.”